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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in healing

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Ravens and Wolves Under the Full Moon

Today’s Full Monday Moon on the 27th is known as the Beaver Moon or the Mourning Moon. It’s true the holidays aren’t always a barrel of laughs for everyone, and in fact can stir up old resentments and new stressors. You could consider or feel the need to make this a time of hibernating and healing if that sounds healthier for you. Are there any social obligations you can skip? Any family rituals that you’ve outgrown? Perhaps it’s time to create some new traditions of your own with you second “family” network of close and trusted friends. Or just keep it simple with your significant other. As Diana Rajchel points out in this year’s Llewellyn Witches’ Datebook, “forced jollity” might not be the way to go for you at this time. Ask yourself instead if what you need is some self-care and self-love right now. Ask this Full Moon for some added protection as well, so old wounds aren’t reopened again. Because Goddess knows, there are some unhappy souls who will always test your boundaries around this time of year.

What Do We Like to Howl About?

Laury Christian Post, our latest “Women Who Howl at the Moon,” podcast guest was a very welcome addition to the show. She has her own cleverly named studio, Ravenrock Healing Arts, in Hartland, and has many nurturing services to offer, including reiki, pilates, and a unique healing through arts class. Be sure to listen to this episode to find out about unlikely friendships between ravens and wolves, being open to possibilities, and her special village holiday event this December 1st.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Everyday Blessings

   Our world has changed, as it does, and as it must, though no one could have anticipated such a catalyst. I have been away from these boards for so long, I hardly know where to begin. At the onset of the pandemic, I was working in elder care, a terribly vulnerable population to face COVID. Through sheer tenacity we were able to keep the residents in the facility safe and health, much to our surprise. My own family fared well; it was only a few months ago that my adult daughter came down with COVID. She lives on her own and was able to isolate. Fortunately, she had a mild case and was back on her feet in a week. 

    COVID hit my household three weeks ago when my adult son tested positive. It knocked him flat, and he is still recovering from the aftereffects, though he is certainly much better. Amid all the uncertainty of the ongoing pandemic I did not expect to face a health crisis of a different nature, one isolation and rest couldn't resolve. In February I received an unexpected and utterly surprising cancer diagnosis; in May it was determined to be stage three, necessitating twelve weeks of chemotherapy. 

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Dreams: Having Surgery or an Operation

Dreams about surgery can be scary, but often, they’re related to personal healing. If the dream doesn’t have to do with some outside factors (like you or a friend undergoing surgery in real life), then it is probably a teaching moment. Think about what sort of surgery you are having in your dream, and what things might be bothering you in your waking life that need to be cut out. Surgeries are meant to help you, not hurt you, and in the same way, this dream may be encouraging you to get rid of something unhealthy from your life. Even if the separation is uncomfortable, scary, or painful, it will be better for your physical and emotional well-being in the long run. If you have been struggling with feelings of anxiety in your life, or just general distress, consider what the source might be and what parts of that you can change or carve out of your life. Trust me—it will be a wonderful, cleansing process!

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Healing Temple Meditation

Healing Temple Meditation

 

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Autumn New Moon Detox: Fire and Water

The first new moon of fall (this Wednesday, October 6th) couldn’t be a better time to begin a good, cleansing detox both inside and out. The artifices and general busy-ness of modern life make it easy to forget sometimes that our inner and outer worlds reflect each other and often need the same amount of care and attention.

As we move through the cycle of the year we accumulate a lot of “stuff”; both physical stuff and emotional stuff. Time for us to change with the season! Time to clear things out, heal, purify and nourish, release, let go and start fresh. All you need are my favorite cosmic twins, Fire and Water.

As I discuss in an earlier post, it’s an awesome, curious fact of physics that water is essentially created by fire. The combination of oxygen and hydrogen requires combustion to transform those gases into liquid water. Inseparable, they make a great polar pairing on many levels and in many workings and even cosmologies, for instance the Norse Ginnunga Gap: the primordial void where fire and ice came together to form the world, the elemental giants and then the gods.

My current favorite way, and such a perfect way for the fall season, to combine the two elements to do a multi-level detox is to brew up a spicy, delicious, Moon-charged fire cider.

If you haven’t heard about the fire cider craze or at least haven’t gotten around to trying it, I highly recommend doing so and especially right now as we move into the chilly, sniffle-riddled seasons. Not only is it a potent immunity-boosting tonic, it’s a delicious seasoning/sauce that’s great to have on hand for sauces, soups, salads, marinades, pickling and anything else you can think of. I’ve been using it regularly for about a year now and I’m hooked.



Read the full article with recipe and ritual

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Diving Into the Wreck: Working With the Dark Waters of Autumn

It is no secret or surprise that fall is probably most people’s favorite season, and it’s easy to see why: the beautiful changing colors of trees and falling leaves, the relief of cooler weather (in many regions), seasonal treats made from pumpkins and apples and, definitely not least of all, the ubiquitously popular holiday of Halloween. Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, originated as the pagan Irish holiday Samhain (SOW-in), which occurs when the veil between this world and the world of the dead is thinnest, and the spirits roam freely. Keeping unwanted spirits away resulted in enduring customs such as costumes and lanterns carved out of turnips (which would evolve into carved pumpkins, which Irish immigrants found much more readily available in the New World in the 19th century), as well as leaving out treats to placate the wandering souls.

There is certainly something in the autumn air itself that seems to testify to the inherent magic and mystery of the season. I know I’m not alone among worshipers of nature and practitioners of magic in feeling like I come back to life in the fall and have much more energy and motivation for journeying, rituals, meditation and magic. Summer stifles and suppresses me on every level, and just makes me cranky. Being fair-skinned and blue-eyed (descended almost exclusively from peoples of the far north) makes me physically sensitive to heat and bright light, and everything else about my personality means that darker, quieter, mystical surroundings are much more conducive to my magic and creativity.

I am especially and unsurprisingly appreciative of and tuned in to the watery energies of fall. Anyone who practices the more common forms of western magic or is familiar with classical occult correspondences knows that the element of water is assigned to the season of fall and the western quarter. While water in her myriad forms is obviously applicable to any direction or time of year, fall does seem to be the most fitting to water in her most common and basic forms.

I’ve come to see the Underworld as the main bridge between the element and the season. One of the more popular and detailed underworld concepts is that of Greek mythology, the realm of Hades which contains five rivers. One of those rivers (Styx or Acheron) is crossed by newly dead souls with the help of Charon, the ferryman. Each of the rivers’ names is based on an emotion associated with death. This is consistent with water being symbolic of emotions, and death is a very emotional thing.

An even more watery underworld is that of Adlivun, the realm of the Inuit goddess Sedna. She dwells in a whale bone palace at the bottom of the sea, to which she sank and transformed into a goddess and the mother of all warm-blooded marine creatures. There is no shortage of emotion in her dark tale or in the sea itself.

I recently discovered a poet named Adrienne Rich. I did so by stumbling upon one of her books on Ebay while searching for something completely different. I was characteristically attracted to the title of the book - “Diving Into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972”, a winner of the National Book Award. I looked up the poem and read it online, loved it, and then ordered the book. I’d like to use this poem and the analogy it presents as a foundation for the kind of personal shadow work and other rituals of self-healing and discovery that are ideal to do this time of year.



First having read the book of myths,

and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,

I put on

the body-armor of black rubber

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

To judge from the comparative evidence, some form of this charm has been current in the Indo-European-speaking world now for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Here's the Hwicce/Tribe of Witches version.

Prescription: Three repetitions, three times daily, until sprain heals.

 

Old Hornie Rade

 

Old Hornie rade,

his foal's foot slade.

Down he lighted,

his foal's foot righted.

Flesh to flesh,

sinew to sinew,

bone to bone:

heal! in the name

of Old Hornie!

 

(Repeat three times.)

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